A series of biblical readings and prayers from David L. Miller, senior pastor of St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Naperville, IL. David is the former editor of The Lutheran magazine and Director of Spiritual Formation at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Spirit of God’s Holy Presence is gentle and
strong, tender to the weak, challenging to the oppressor and a word of hope for
we who hunger to see and know God in our lives.

We see the Spirit of the Holy One in the lives of
those who know how to love, how to give from their heart.

We know God not in acts of power that protect us from
the normal troubles of life, but in the lives of those who lift the hearts of
those beaten down by disease, prejudice and forces of history they cannot
control. We see the Spirit in those who seek justice for those denied the
blessings God intends for every human soul.

They radiate the beauty of God. They give hope where
it is failing. They are a light amid the darkness that sometimes engulfs human
hearts.

The Spirit is the presence of the Love God is, healing
broken hearts and standing with those oppressed.

There is a new atheism taking hold in western nations that
rejects God as unreal. But the god they reject is not the God we meet Isaiah, the
One who sends his servant to bring freedom to an enslaved people and who tenderly
cares for the weak.

They do not see Jesus as that Spirit-filled servant of the One who refuses to pay back evil for evil, but who loves amid the forces
of rejection. This God is God, our hope.